


The Paths Unchosen

by The_Carnivorous_Muffin



Series: Finishing the Hat [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Naruto, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, F/M, Friendship/Love, Tragedy, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-24
Updated: 2018-10-19
Packaged: 2019-07-02 01:27:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15786141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Carnivorous_Muffin/pseuds/The_Carnivorous_Muffin
Summary: In a possible future, Anakin chooses to become a shinobi, and Padme is left trying to understand exactly what this means.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Obligatory note that this is NOT CANON.

Many things change in ten years.

 

Naboo is free from the Trade Federation’s invading droids, saved ten years prior by two jedi, two shinobi, an army of gungans, and a young slave boy from Tatooine. Now, ten years later, it’s a different sort of war that’s on the horizon, one that threatens to grip the whole republic as the seperatists threaten to tear them apart at their seams.

 

Padme Amidala is no longer queen of Naboo, having set aside her title to take up the role of senator, finding herself quite often flying back and forth between Naboo and Coruscant, only without quite so many body guards, assassination attempts, or heavy cloying traditional clothing.

 

Obi-Wan Kenobi, as far as she understands it, has become quite the jedi and is quickly making his way towards becoming a jedi master. His master Qui-Gon Jinn still does not have a position on the council and often seems to chafe under them, or at least, as far as Padme can gather from the either the gossiping shinobi or Qui-Gon himself.

 

Naboo still hosts the embassy for Konoha, one both on Naboo and on Coruscant, and over the years there have been a small collection of many different shinobi passing through, some seeming absurdly young, little more than children, as they stoically or else enthusiastically nod their greetings towards her in accented Basic as they pass through the halls.

 

And it’s amazing how she gets used to them and doesn’t all at once, how she no longer blinks at them, but is often taken aback by their mannerisms and eccentricities. They are at once fiercely intelligent, pragmatic, ruthless, but also drunken fools, boundless optimists, and passionate friends. Each is so wildly filled with life, even those who are less expressive than the others, and speaking to a shinobi sometimes feels like trying to be heard in a hurricane, just leaving one exhausted at the end of it.

 

But perhaps, strangest of all, are the changes that ten years have performed on the little boy Anakin Skywalker, who, given the choice between becoming a jedi or a mercenary, chose to leave the republic behind for a planet that no one besides the shinobi themselves had ever seen.

 

* * *

 

There’s a strange sort of innocent charm to the nineteen-year-old Anakin Skywalker. His smile, while white and gleaming and more than a little handsome, has a childlike carefree quality to it that belies the troubled times they find themselves in and the looming threat of war.

 

If she didn’t know better she’d think he’d lived a sheltered life when she knows he’s had anything but.

 

This shows in his calloused hands, more calloused than even a jedi’s, as he grips hers in his as he asks her to show him around Coruscant or Naboo or wherever Padme’s work and Anakin’s duty of guarding her has happened to take them.

 

He’s an odd mixture of foreign and familiar, wearing their dark green clothing and silver headband proudly on his forehead, his hair grown out and curling at the ends, his eyes a dark and stormy blue, but his Basic fluent and his accent only that of backwater Tatooine rather than somewhere even further than that.

 

Sometimes though, when he looks at her, the glow of the sunset lighting his golden hair and casting shadows in his eyes, he seems so terribly old and nostalgic, as if he is staring on this present moment like a beloved memory. Tender, and so very, dangerously, fragile.

 

He’s also, at times, rather forward.

 

“You know I meant it,” he says when they first reunite after years of being apart, her in Coruscant and him in Konoha, a flush on his cheeks as he stares at her, almost five years younger than her and looking every minute of it, “When I said you were beautiful.”

 

He doesn’t take it back either, even as his embarrassment, and her own embarrassment, spreads like wildfire between them.

 

“Obito always said I’d grow out of it, that I’d find myself some pretty _kunoichi_ and have lots of beautiful children with ungodly amounts of _chakra_ ,” Anakin says, rubbing the back of his head rather awkwardly, “Of course, he has no room to talk what with his lifelong infatuation with Rin, but all the same… You really are still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. And sometimes I still wonder if you really aren’t an angel after all.”

 

Padme, at the time, doesn’t know how to take this.

 

She doesn’t later for that matter. Because he is cute in his own charming way, something that grows on her as he smiles, as his hand squeezes her or as he drags her away to find some long lost curiosity that he’d forgotten about or else never seen before.

 

And his eyes light up like little stars every time, and she catches herself staring at them, and thinking that she’s never met anyone quite like Anakin Skywalker and she never will.

 

But then she remembers the stark reality of the situation, that Anakin Skywalker has been paid in credits, goods, and information, to be her bodyguard as she makes her way to the senate to vote on the funding and building of an army to combat the looming separatist threat.

 

And it cascades through her, without mercy, when she waked one night to find herself staring at Anakin Skywalker, the little boy who’d so desperately wanted to help anyone who came across his path, clutching an old-fashioned metal throwing knife, crouched over the discarded body of an assassin (throat slit and eyes glazed), blood dripping down his finger tips and onto the carpet, and not a word towards her or a single hint of disquiet in him.

 

And all those idle thoughts about his smile and his light vanish into the dark, leaving only dying embers of them behind.

 

* * *

 

“You know, this would never happen in _Konoha_ ,” Anakin says musingly, perched on the steps of the senate like a strange oversized bird, his wooden platformed sandals barely touching the marble yet somehow maintaining perfect balance with ease, his nose stuck in a book of flimsy, the kind that seems as if it should belong in a museum if it did not look so newly printed.

 

And even though he seems suitably distracted, Padme is sure that he’s very focused, all the shinobi are whenever Naboo contracts them for something (whenever the jedi are too busy or it’s a small enough task that a jedi might refuse but a shinobi won’t for adequate compensation), at one moment they’re chatting happily and the next they’re moving faster than lightning, knives out and a look of utter determination on their faces.

 

Anakin, for all his sweetness, is no different.

 

“What would?”

 

Anakin stands, stretches, and gives her a rather amused look, “All this quibbling over funding an army or not. Or even sending the jedi or not.”

 

“It’s an important issue and…”

 

Anakin holds up a hand in casual protest, forgetting once again that he’s a hired bodyguard speaking to a senator who was once royalty, “I didn’t say it wasn’t, simply that _Konoha_ always seems to be ready for war in one sense or another. Even now, when it’s the longest era of peace we’ve had, we’re still all ready for battle at a moment’s notice… Of course, you’d have to be insane to attack _Konoha_ right now, what with Eru Lee, Namikaze Minato, Senju Tobirama, Senju Hashirama, Hatake Sakumo, and well, everyone else, still all in their prime or close enough to it. All that said, I think the fire _daimyo_ knows better than to substitute his own army for _Konoha’s_ shinobi population.”

 

“Oh, why shouldn’t the jedi help the republic?”

 

That curious, rather reminiscent of Lee Eru, raise of his pale eyebrows, “Because they’re not really part of the republic, are they? They’re neutral, lack attachment, or they’re supposed to be at any rate. Besides, _ninja_ wars aren’t for the faint of heart, and anyone knows that if they send _shinobi_ out to the battlefield and the other country matches with the same amount of force, there probably won’t be a battlefield to stand on within a few years. Just look at what happened to _Uzushio_ , _Ame_ , or _Kusa_. Anyone with any sense at all would be wary of calling on that sort of weapon.”

 

And it’s that, that casual talk of battle, of himself as a weapon, that always gets to her. The jedi, for all the qualms that Padme does sometimes have with their philosophies, do not consider themselves tools of war without even blinking.

 

Every single shinobi she’s ever talked to, small or large, man or woman, hasn’t had a moment of hesitation answering. Some, she thinks, even find it amusing that she feels the need to point it out to them.

 

And it’s at times like this, staring at him as he hooks his arm into hers and asks where she wants to go now, that she wonders if she wouldn’t rather have seen Anakin Skywalker as a jedi after all.

 

* * *

 

“Are you happy, being a _shinobi_?”

 

They’re on Naboo, Anakin insisting they return for her safety, stating that the capital is crawling with not only seperatists but enemy ninja (although he does not explain how this is possible, when there is only one jedi order), and they’re lying on their backs staring at the great blue sky (its colors reflected in his clear eyes).

 

He doesn’t answer right away, the wind ruffling through his hair, but there is that small tender smile on his face again, “Yes, it’s hard at times but… Yes, this is the best future for me, for everyone really.”

 

“You don’t regret not being a jedi, then?”

 

Another pause, his eyes turn to rove over her, and at once she feels both exposed but also warm, there’s so much warmth in his eyes, “No… Did you know, if I’d become a jedi, we would have married.”

 

Padme blinks, dropping the flower chain she’s been building, staring at him in alarmed confusion (and Anakin does make it a habit of saying alarmingly confusing things), “What?”

 

He’s not looking at her, even though his eyes are turned in her direction, rather he seems to be staring past her and into the living force itself, “Well, not yet, a few months from now. I’d have been given a mission as a jedi to be your guard, we’d have come to Naboo, and while we spent months here waiting for the threat on your life to be rooted out by Kenobi we’d grow closer… And, as war breaks out in the republic, you and I would have a secret wedding with only our droids as witnesses.”

 

He trails off here, seemingly done, only giving a small sigh and staring silently back up at the sky, so it’s Padme who finds herself asking (really wanting to stammer it out with sheer embarrassment), “Well… Do we get married here?”

 

“I don’t know…” he sighs again, “It’s not the same here, I’m… I’m not the same. Less arrogant, more disciplined, more at ease but… You find him less unnerving, and sweeter, I think. And, and our romance was not always a sweet one. It also destroys entire star systems, after all.”

 

She has nothing to say to this, frankly always finding Anakin’s predictions more than a little unnerving and ominous, and not wanting to think if this is all metaphorical or quite literal. Except, staring at him, at the way the wind ruffles his hair, at his tanned face, his blue eyes, the wrinkles in his dark green clothing, she can’t help but think she wouldn’t mind someday marrying this boy, “I’m glad that you don’t know, Anakin.”

 

“Oh?”

 

“It makes it truer, whatever happens, I think.” She says, “After all, if you knew everything, wouldn’t it make it that much less real?”

 

“It’s a dangerous gift,” Anakin agrees, sitting up and staring at her, his lips quirking up into his strange smile, “It would have destroyed me, you know, if I’d been a jedi.”

 

“Good thing you’re not a jedi then,” she says, smiling back.

 

“Well… I’ll give jedi Anakin this, he’s much better at _kenjutsu_ than I am, and far more popular with the ladies.” Anakin says with a shrug and a small smirk that startles a small girlish giggle out of Padme, nothing appropriate for a senator.

 

“No, surely not.”

 

“Oh, but you see, he never had to compete with Itachi Uchiha. I just had no chance at all with that sort of opponent.” Anakin then gives a fake cry of despair, “You see, I just can’t brood well enough. Jedi Anakin, now he I think, was an excellent brooder.”

 

They look at each other, in this sunny Naboo field, and both burst into laughter.

 

“You know, Anakin, I think I like you just the way you are.”

 

(The war edges closer, the scent of it in the wind and the feel of the sunshine, and somehow even while Padme feels it creep closer, she knows that it’s Anakin who can feel it in his shadow.)

 

* * *

 

At the advent of the war, Padme Amidala and Anakin Skywalker do not get married.

 

* * *

 

The shinobi aren’t called upon for the war, although there is debate over whether they should be. After all, it’s little different to some than building a clone army or employing a battalion of droids, not citizens of the republic at risk, but simply mercenaries.

 

However, it would still be human life on the battle field, or human life they choose to respect (rather than the blood of the clones which now waters the fields of so many planets), and that stands against everything the republic stands for.

 

That, and shinobi are foreign, can’t be controlled, and ultimately defer to their own leaders and regulations. They make no pretenses of being on the republic’s side, even Anakin Skywalker, born on Tatooine.

 

So, it’s the jedi and the clones and the droids who go out to try to hold the republic together. And Anakin Skywalker stays behind to continue guarding her, to act as the bridge between Konoha and the republic, while the war rages.

 

“I don’t understand it,” he says bleakly one day, staring out at the rain, the holo with the latest news from the front, Obi-Wan Kenobi’s face brought up as they speak of his valor and the meager victories of the republic, “If you only send out droids and clones to butcher each other, with civilians as unfortunate collateral damage, then how can this ever end? It’ll just be whichever of you runs out of money first that determines the victor.”

 

“Anakin, remember we don’t have an army, or at least, not any that can match the seperatists’ droids.”

 

They’d never needed one, the republic, after all, had not been at war with itself and there was no one else to be at war with. Wars like that were ancient history. But Anakin just looks at her as if she’s somehow missed his point entirely, and should almost be pitied for it.

 

“If you aren’t willing to battle for your own existence then how can you possibly hope to win this war?” Anakin asks, slowly, tasting the words, before his eyes narrow on her and he states, “You, Padme, of all people should understand that.”

 

He’s, of course, talking about Naboo, and how it was Padme and the gunguns who had beaten back the Trade Federation, and Padme can’t help but flush at the words as she tries to explain, “That was different, I begged the senate for help and they said no, if they’d granted my request then…”

 

“They never would have granted your request,” Anakin cuts her off, “It’s why you’re having this war in the first place.”

 

“What are you talking about?”

 

“Self-interest, corruption, greed, there’s very little holding this republic together, Padme.” Anakin shook his head, a look of disbelief on his face as he tried to grasp that she wasn’t following, refused to follow, “Look at this place, hell, look at the jedi for that matter! It’s not the seperatists that’s driving this or even the sith, it’s you! This has been building for years, before we even met really… In fact, Lee is surprised it took this long.”

 

“And what would she know about it?”

 

Lee, always Lee Eru, unspoken and hanging over them like an ever-present shadow. Always judging, despite the blood on her own hands and the dark shadows of her own past and planet. Padme had never missed the woman.

 

Anakin falters, and says nothing, seems unwilling to counter her argument, lets his unspoken rebuttle simmer between them. Finally, with dull exhaustion, he says, “I wish Luke was here.”

 

She refuses to look at him, speak to him, so she doesn’t ask who Luke is, she doesn’t need to as he continues.

 

“Luke, he should have been the best and brightest of all of us… It’s amazing, how clearly I see him sometimes, him and Leia. He could bring… balance back to the force, to the republic. But he’ll never exist now, him or his sister.”

 

He turns to her, and something in him is burning, inside out, so that Padme can almost see the strange divine light pouring out of his eyes, “And I should be happy, because I have so much already. I have you, I have my mother, Lee, Obito, Qui-Gon, and even Obi-Wan, but… I don’t think I can do what he did, and I don’t know if I could stand to.”

 

(That night, and every night after, she dreams of twins. A blonde little boy, an almost carbon copy of Anakin Skywalker, and a brown haired little girl taking after Padme herself…

 

They smile at her, and wave goodbye before they even have a chance to say hello.)

 

* * *

 

The war rages on, Anakin Skywalker and Padme Amidala do not marry.


	2. Chapter 2

As the civil war progresses, and the fighting spreads even to the orbit of core planets, Naboo, which has always had strangely close ties with the shinobi of Konohagakure, dispatches a few notable reinforcements with the lukewarm agreement of the divided senate.

 

Or rather, for Obi-Wan Kenobi, one notable reinforcement.

 

Three years after Count Dooku’s raid on Geonosis and the start of this horrific war, one that Obi-Wan privately fears will rend the galaxy in two if it has not done so already, Anankin Skywalker, the boy who was almost a jedi, master Qui-Gon’s prophesized chosen one, is now to be considered a comrade in arms even as he wears the traditional shinobi headband and flak green jacket.

 

Still, Anakin is not as unfamiliar a face as Obi-Wan would have expected him to be when he’d watched the boy offer his final bow on Naboo, to himself, Qui-Gon, and tearfully to Padme Amidala thirteen years ago. When he’d left then, with his mother beside him, taking the pale hands of Lee Eru and her apprentice, there’d been a sense of something final, that to leave now was to never return.

 

But return he did three years prior, on Naboo’s behest to guard their senator both on Coruscant and her home planet, wearing Konoha’s headband and speaking their language as fluently as Huttesse or Basic.

 

However, their paths have rarely crossed even since then. The jedi council is aware of him, as they are of all shinobi on Naboo or Coruscant or whatever corner of the galaxy they feel it their duty to explore, but that does not mean that Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi met face to face.

 

There had been a few awkward, short, greetings on the senate steps or outside the temple as Anakin would loiter about with one of his shinobi comrades or else would wait with an almost boyish smile for Padme to return from her senate session, but nothing more than that.

 

Truthfully, Obi-Wan had never been as close to Anakin as Qui-Gon had.

 

He’d really had few thoughts about him when they’d first met as they fled from Tatooine towards Coruscant. Most of what he’d thought about the boy had been misdirected feelings that centered more upon Obi-Wan’s relationship to his own master. Anakin had been… An example, an example of his own master’s bull-headedness and deviation from the jedi code, and then as a replacement for himself, reinforcement for that constant nagging suspicion that it was pity that motivated Qui-Gon to take him as his padawan all those years ago.

 

It wasn’t fair to young Anakin Skywalker but Obi-Wan had been young then and, as master Qui-Gon had rightly noted, a bit hot headed. He hadn’t been ready for his trials, he knew that now, and a part of him was grateful that Anakin’s decision took that choice out of the council’s and Qui-Gon’s hands.

 

However, at the end, when Anakin Skywalker had plainly said no, that he would not become a jedi Obi-Wan had felt…

 

He isn’t quite sure, even now, except that it was part surprise, part insult, but also something proud, a pride he couldn’t quite explain to himself that Anakin had had the courage and wisdom that even Qui-Gon Jinn hadn’t, to recognize his own limitations.

 

To realize, that the galaxy is best served when Anakin Skywalker is not a jedi.

 

Except, there had also been… A strange sense of loss, as if, here, here was a moment he was supposed to cherish, and he let it slip through his fingers.

 

It is a feeling he still grapples with, as he reaches out to the force, and one he never quite understands.

 

* * *

 

Anakin, when he first shows up inside the jedi temple with his own partner, waiting for Obi-Wan to be debriefed, grins at him as if he is an old friend and moves forward as if to embrace him like a brother.

 

“Kenobi!” his hair is grown out, curling slightly at the ends and only just out of his startlingly deep blue eyes, his smile is just as wide and delighted as it was when he was only nine-years-old and staring at Coruscant for the first time from orbit, and he looks nothing like a jedi, “Oh, they didn’t tell me we’d be working with you!”

 

Obi-Wan narrowly dodges the embrace, offering Anakin a polite smile, one that, apparently, Anakin can see through quite clearly as his own grin dies into something sheepish. Next to him is a somewhat familiar pale and dark-haired shinobi who offers a rather blank faced look that is either one of perfect serenity or else slight exasperation, and even with Obi-Wan’s access to the force it’s difficult to tell which it is. This, of course, is Obito Uchiha’s younger cousin and future head of his clan, Itachi Uchiha who has off and on made an appearance in the galaxy throughout the years.

 

Sometimes on his own, here and there on different planets, more often with Anakin himself on Naboo or Coruscant, as the two seem to not only be comrades in arms but also close friends.

 

(And there’s a flash of irritation, yes, that was it, some strange form of irritation, and the unsettling and unprompted thought that Itachi Uchiha is somehow replacing Obi-Wan himself. As if it’s Obi-Wan who should be standing there, arms crossed, sighing at Anakin’s foolishness and with suppressed amusement telling the young man to get a hold of himself and his arrogance.

 

Which, of course, is an absurd feeling.)

 

“Yes, well, we do have history together,” Obi-Wan states, “And you are from here.”

 

“True, very true, although I’m not sure if Tatooine counts as the republic, but I’ll take it,” Anakin repeats with a nod of agreement and an easier grin, and everything about him is so very animated, he is always in movement even in this initial meeting, shifting, pacing, never quite standing still, as if the force itself compels him into movement. Clearly, Konoha saw no need in teaching him how to stand still, “All the same, it’s good to see you. I think the last time we really saw each other you hadn’t grown in your beard yet.”

 

“Certainly not, it hasn’t been that long, you’ve been here a number of times with Senator Amidala. Since before the war started, even,” Obi-Wan scoffed, because he’d certainly had a beard by that point, but Anakin only grins back and holds his hands up as if in surrender.

 

“Well, Kenobi, I’d hardly call those meetings. You and I never seemed to get a chance to catch up, well, and then the war happened and you became a general of all things…” Anakin trails off and then sighs, eyes flicking to Itachi whose expression doesn’t change in the slightest, still, some message is conveyed between the two of them.

 

Finally, Anakin states, really blurts as if he has only just been holding these words in, “It was… well, not Padme’s idea, but not really ours either. Let’s just blame the upper echelon of Naboo, shall we? Well, them and the senate. We, I know we have a strained relationship, _Konoha_ and the jedi, but we respect your jurisdiction. Itachi, me, anyone else they send won’t be jostling for command, rest assured.”

 

Anakin abruptly turns to his comrade and says something rather harsh and chiding in that other tongue, Lee Eru’s tongue, to which his partner only raises a single, dark eyebrow. Anakin appears then to dismiss this and turns back to Obi-Wan.

 

Where a strained silence commences, the force itself almost humming with the awkwardness, and as always whenever he and Anakin even seem to brush paths there is an overwhelming sense of… something.

 

“Oh, right, you and Itachi haven’t actually met, have you?” Anakin asked, he then motioned to his companion, in an extravagant manner that was almost reminiscent of Lee Eru, which Itachi himself didn’t seem to appreciate in the slightest, “This is Itachi Uchiha, clan heir and my best friend, or well… The closest thing I have to a best friend who is actually my age. Even if he is prettier, smarter, and all around more talented than I am at everything.”

 

Itachi says nothing to this, merely raises an eyebrow then looks back towards Obi-Wan, offering a shallow bow and a very polite if accented, “Pleased to meet you, Kenobi-san, Anakin and I look forward to working with you.”

 

“You’re not going to tell me I’m wrong?” Anakin asks, his eyebrow lowering and grin growing slightly strained.

 

“It is impolite to lie to one’s friends,” Itachi supplies rather blandly.

 

“No! It’s far ruder to let me go and call myself generally unworthy to stand in Itachi Uchiha’s mere shadow!” Anakin shouted, face suddenly red with anger, fist balled up and glaring daggers at his comrade, his rage a sudden inferno within the force, “You know, I do have way more chakra than you and also have a barrel full of kick ass _kekki genkai_ like moving things with my mind and seeing the future!”

 

“I thought you only saw the future that couldn’t occur,” Itachi interjects in a musing sort of tone that seems to pay no heed to Anakin’s display of rage, in fact, only seemed to fuel it.

 

“That’s not true, I see the future all the time, it’s just easier to see the other one, for whatever reason!” at his friend’s dark eyed dubious look Anakin’s face reddened further and he cried out, “Shut up! You know, Itachi, this is why you have that weird love-hate relationship with your little brother! If you could even pretend to be less of a pretentious asshole, then maybe Sasuke wouldn’t be such a little shit!”

 

And suddenly, in the moment it took Obi-Wan to blink, Anakin has been thrown into the carpet, leaving a small crater in the floor along with burn marks while Itachi stands there serene as ever as if nothing has happened at all.

 

“My apologies, Kenobi-san, sometimes Anakin is under the mistaken impression that he’s five,” Itachi explains, as if this surreal moment needs explanation, for his own part Obi-Wan doesn’t really have anything to say to this.

 

As a result, the silence continues long after Anakin has recovered, brushing himself off and wincing at the sight of the ruined carpet, even while Itachi and Obi-Wan both watch him with the same blank expression and an unwilling feeling of kinship as Anakin forces them into the same role.

 

“Right, well,” Anakin claps his hands together, looking both towards Obi-Wan and Itachi, “Now that these subdued introductions are over with I suppose we should be getting to the front. Lead the way, _shogun_.”

 

Obi-Wan can only think that he is exhausted already and that Anakin Skywalker really would have been the worst of jedi.

 

* * *

 

Obi-Wan had learned, thirteen years ago, that there is nothing like a shinobi on the battlefield. They are as jedi were, thousands of years ago when the war with the sith was anything but subdued, and perhaps they are even more than that. They are a people who have been bred for war for hundreds of years.

 

The shinobi say, that when Lee Eru takes the battlefield, it is like staring into the shadow of red shadow of death.

 

He does not know himself, he only saw the aftermath of her battle with the droids on Naboo, however… However, in witnessing the sheer devastation and the ease at which she performed it, his imagination often tries to do that moment justice.

 

Lee Eru, they rank among their best warriors to have ever lived if not the best, however, Anakin Skywalker and Itachi Uchiha are surely worthy of their own reputations. He rarely gives them orders, but he rarely needs to, they scout, gather intelligence, and on the battlefield droids are no more than scrap metal to them.

 

Often, Obi-Wan will find himself sending them out alone to deal with some other encampment while he and his own troop of clones attack another. Yet, all the same, there is always a pang of nauseous worry, for something he can’t quite explain, when he sees the ease at which they come back from these episodes.

 

True, it is only droids they face, but if it were men… He wonders if they would hesitate.

 

And a part of him shudders to see Anakin has become everything Qui-Gon had feared he would in the shinobis’ hands.

 

There is undeniable good in their assistance though, they and the few other shinobi sent to aid the republic, even without familiar faces like Lee Eru or Obito Uchiha or even the names of the shinobis’ great warriors Kakashi Hatake, Minato Namikaze, Hashirama Senju, Tobirama Senju, and many others, they are helping to turn the tide of the war back again.

 

The republic may never again be what it was, but, at least it will be.

 

However, one thing nags at him above all else, more than the violence or the tension between jedi and shinobi, Itachi and Anakin… They always keep wide berth of the clones.

 

* * *

 

Obi-Wan has been fighting this war so long he almost doesn’t know what moon he is on. Either way, one night, a grinning Anakin Skywalker sits down beside him at his campfire, “Evening, Kenobi.”

 

His eyes, dark in the night, then look up towards the star and the nearby planet, their light reflected in his pupils, “It’s a beautiful night, isn’t it?”

 

“Anakin, what brings you here? I would have thought you would be making camp with Itachi,” Obi-Wan notes, and this seems to remind Anakin that he’s sitting there as Anakin’s eyes drift away from the sky back towards him and the fire.

 

“Oh, I am, he’s actually getting started, had the nerve to kick me out, says I’m far too impatient to set up any sort of decent camp or cook dinner. So, while I’m still in exile I thought I’d stop by and see how you’re doing.”

 

“I am in the midst of a war,” Obi-Wan notes wrily, “A war which I believe we are losing.”

 

“Come now, Kenobi, that’s hardly fair,” Anakin says with a generosity he really doesn’t need to have towards Obi-Wan, “You’re doing better.”

 

“Anakin, they are in the core planet systems now, three years ago they were isolated to the outer rim,” Obi-Wan then says what he has never said to the senate or even the jedi council, those words he has buried so deep inside him that they could never see the light of any sun, “I fear that we will lose this war.”

 

“I thought jedi didn’t feel fear or anger,” Anakin notes with a smile but the smile fades as Obi-Wan continues to look at him with a somber expression, “Yes, well, republics do end, Kenobi.”

 

“I would prefer this one didn’t,” Obi-Wan responds, “Not in my lifetime anyway.”

 

“I’m sure most feel the same way,” Anakin says, then pauses, looking skyward, “What does Lee always say at times like these? So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world Frodo, besides the will of evil. Bilbo was meant to find the Ring. In which case, you were also meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought.”

 

And is it strange how Obi-Wan can almost picture that strange red-headed woman, with her delighted grin and startling green eyes, saying those words to her own apprentice or else to Anakin Skywalker with a softer edge to her smile.

 

“That’s quite wise, Anakin, although I’m afraid you lost me towards the end,” Obi-Wan says and Anakin offers him a pleased grin.

 

“Well, it is a quote from Lee, who is in turn quoting ‘The Lord of the Rings’, that’s about as intelligible as you’re going to get,” Anakin then pauses and adds, “And thank you, Kenobi. All the same, war is… I am glad that I missed the third war,” he finishes rather lamely, poking at the fire with a stick and a strangely pensive expression. He eyes Obi-Wan then, as if not entirely sure what to make of him, then asks, “What do you plan to do when the war is over?”

 

“Do?”

 

“Sure, you’ll no longer be a general, right?” Anakin asks, his smile growing again.

 

“Well, I suppose I shall do whatever the order needs me to do. I will still be a jedi, after all,” Obi-Wan states and here Anakin’s expression dims again and for a moment it looks, it almost seems as if Anakin knows some dreadful truth that Obi-Wan doesn’t, one he can’t bring himself to say.

 

It shines out of his eyes with a force that is almost blinding. Then, just like that, the look is gone, “That’s not very creative, Kenobi, let’s pretend you can do anything you want.”

 

“I want to remain a jedi,” Obi-Wan answers with an almost unwilling smile forming on his lips, “I am sorry if I bore you, but this is my life and I have no wish to stray from it, war or no war.”

 

He can just imagine the look Obito Uchiha might have given him at such a response, the sheer exasperation of it, likely raking a hand through his thick black hair and then rolling his eyes towards his own master as if she might have a better way to deal with this.

 

However, Anakin appears strangely sober, as he looks across at Obi-Wan. It is a reminder, that for as youthful as Anakin acts, there is a dangerous maturity in him as well at times.

 

“And if you lose this war, your republic and your order?” Anakin asks, “What then?”

 

What then? That is a future Obi-Wan doesn’t dare to contemplate or seek in the muddled force. The force which has grown increasingly unresponsive to any jedi since the beginning of this civil war. Worse, even, than when Lee Eru and her apprentice had wandered the galaxy.

 

Only, sometimes he dreams it, sometimes he dreams of the end of the republic and the slaughter of the jedi, he wanders into the jedi temple overflowing with the bodies of the dead children, and Anakin Skywalker is there, as he is always there, his eyes yellow as he stares up at him with such rage as Obi-Wan begs, please, Anakin, my brother, I have the high ground, do not force me to destroy you…

 

And every single time, Anakin gives his master a cruel and twisted smirk, his lightsaber blue and bright in the ever present dark of Mustafar, and he leaps forward into his own damnation.

 

Even now, long before Obi-Wan drifts to sleep, he can hear Anakin’s tortured cries.

 

Anakin says nothing for a moment, likely waiting for Obi-Wan’s response, and merely stares into the flames, the light dancing in his eyes, finally he states, “Those clones of yours are very dangerous, Kenobi.”

 

“I should hope so,” Obi-Wan says, that was, after all, why they had been created though that is a view that Obi-Wan himself does not agree with. The production of the clones for the war, while understandable was one of those actions Obi-Wan wishes the republic had never stooped to.

 

“Not to your enemies, I mean,” Anakin interjects, “Whose clones are they?”  


“Does it matter?” Obi-Wan asks.

 

“Infinitely,” Anakin says, and there is a confidence to him as he says this, his eyes blazing, “A clone is derived from their creator, even if they are different, they will share at least some traits in common. Besides that, replicants, androids, clones… They too dream of electric sheep and if they recognize their own sentience then they’ll recognize your people are sending them to the slaughterhouse. Their creation serves some greater purpose, either their own or someone else’s. You would be wise, Kenobi, to keep an eye on them.”

 

“Is that what you and Itachi are doing?”

 

“Itachi and I are doing our jobs,” Anakin scoffs, “Nothing less.”

 

But nothing more either. And in this moment, he almost regrets, somehow, that Anakin is not a jedi, because then perhaps, perhaps they would not be sitting across from one another, this unwelcome tension between them. That insurmountable divide between shinobi and jedi…

 

Obi-Wan sighs then states evenly, “These are my men, Anakin, to me they are not simply clones, I know them. They have fought loyally by my side for years without question but also because they want to. As you said they have hopes and aspirations beyond this war just like the rest of us, even if they have a hard time expressing this or realizing it themselves, but that does not make them untrustworthy.”

 

“Are you sure of that?” Anakin asks, and there is… A strange unbreakable certainty within him, ringing in the force like a gong struck, and for a moment Obi-Wan almost falters, but then, he remembers exactly what Anakin is saying.

 

“Yes, Anakin, I’m quite sure.”

 

And Anakin looks at him for a moment… For a moment he wears the expression Obi-Wan wears in his own dreams, as if it is he who has the high ground, staring down at Obi-Wan Kenobi and screaming that there is some other path, a path that Obi-Wan cannot even think to look for.

 

But it is only for a moment.

 

Soon after Anakin stands, raises his hands together, and disappears from Obi-Wan’s camp sight, leaving only a pile of dead leaves behind.

 

* * *

 

The war continues, as it has for three years now, and once he overhears Anakin stating to Itachi, as they stand over the shells of massacred battle droids, “We are engaged in an endless war of soulless machines. When, Itachi, will they run out of money for clones and droids?”

 

Itachi offers no answer, merely a small hum of acknowledgement, as the pair of them, throwing knives in hand, stare off into the sunset of this endless parade of strange worlds they find themselves fighting on.

 

* * *

 

The end, however, for Anakin Skywalkers and every other shinobi, comes far sooner than any of them would have expected.

 

General Grievous ships converge over Coruscant and in a tremendous show of force they manage to kidnap the chancellor himself. It is a battle that has Obi-Wan along with his shinobi allies racing through the ship to find the man.

 

And when they find Dooku…

 

Anakin seems to move slowly and quickly at the same time, space and time bend around him through the will of the force, and with only his throwing knives in hand he evades Dooku’s lightsaber and rams his knife through the man’s throat without a moment’s hesitation. Watching as the man, Qui-Gon’s old master, stumbles backwards, drops his saber and falls to his knees, attempts to reach out for it only to be kicked backwards by Anakin and has the knife further lodged into his throat.

 

He dies there, choking on his own blood, beneath Anakin Skywalker’s overwhelming contempt and indifference.

 

Because for a shinobi, somehow, there is never hesitation. Not even when, without a look of remorse or regret, Anakin wipes the blood from the handle of Dooku’s light saber, and loops it through his belt.

 

(And something about this scene is hauntingly familiar, only, only there is supposed to be at least hesitation, the senator’s words, “do it” ringing over and over again as the man urges Anakin to exalt in his own suppressed bloodlust and rage…)

 

And the look Anakin and Itachi spare for the senator in that moment, it is almost as if they are witnessing the punchline to some grand joke that Obi-Wan is not privy to, with Anakin asking in his typical cocksure manner, “Chancellor, what is a man like you doing in a place like this?”

 

And the joke is, somehow, that the chancellor is exactly where he wants to be or else that he is in the last place anyone would expect him to be but somehow should.

 

Of course, the chancellor appears to take it in good humor, invites Anakin and Itachi to speak with him when they are planetside once again leaving Obi-Wan to debrief with the council then wait for them and the news.

 

It is twilight by the time the pair return once again. They stare at him, offer a pair of bows in tandem, a twisted look on Anakin’s face as he stares downward at the floor. In the end, it’s Itachi who speaks first, “I’m afraid, Kenobi-san, that our mission has ended. The funding has been revoked and the senate has decided that the shinobi have done enough. More, the hokage himself, given recent information, has decided to extract our forces immediately. It has been an honor to serve under you.”

 

“Extracted? Funding?” Obi-Wan asks, feeling out of sorts and almost as if this is a joke, though Itachi seems incapable of joking, at least compared to Anakin, “What are you talking about?”  


“Itachi’s right, several S-rank nins are expensive, and you already pay for the clones. They decided we’re not worth the price,” Anakin adds and there is regret as he says this as if he truly does regret this, “And… And even if they did keep paying, we can’t stay now.”

 

“What did he say to you?” Obi-Wan asks, “What could he have possibly said?”

 

“I am an Anakin Skywalker who possesses no wife or children,” Anakin replies cryptically, as if these words should be far more weighted than they seem, “I don’t think he quite understood that.”

 

“What does that…”

 

“The republic and the seperatists,” Anakin states, the force itself interwoven in his voice, “Have both lost this war.”

 

He then winces, looks down at the floor again, and mutters, “I’m sorry.”

 

Obi-Wan simply stares, tries to comprehend what Anakin could possibly mean, perhaps that this will be a pyrrhic victory for either side which Obi-Wan can more than believe, but no, there is something darker to this, something Obi-Wan cannot quite understand.

 

“…So, you’re leaving then?”

 

“It doesn’t have to be just us,” Anakin responds, and his eyes are burning, he steps forward ignoring the restraining hand that Itachi places on his shoulder.

 

“Anakin…”

 

Anakin disregards him and continues, grabbing Obi-Wan by the shoulders and forcing him to look at Anakin as the man raves, “Kenobi, I know we aren’t close here, not in this world, but there are other worlds when you are all but a brother to me, and I don’t want to leave you here to this nightmare. I can’t save your republic, your order, but I can save you, Padme, and maybe even Qui-Gon. Please, Obi-Wan, come with us to Konoha while you still have the chance!”

 

“To _Konoha_?” Obi-Wan asks, “Are you mad?”

 

“Obi-Wan, I know you’ve seen parts of it, but I’ve seen all of it,” Anakin says before Obi-Wan can brush him aside, “Itachi is right, it’s harder for me to see this world, but the world in which I do not become a _shinobi_ I know intimately. I know the curve of Padme’s smiles, I know the sound of your laughter, the scent in the air at Dex’s after a mission, and the taste of blood everywhere. I’ve seen the end of the world, the end of this world. A storm is coming for the galaxy and the jedi will face extinction!”

 

He pauses then, offers out a laugh that sounds more like a sob, “And Luke an Leia, my children, they will not exist to offer your new hope to you. This, Obi-Wan, is the end of the line as far as I can see it. Please, you may live, you may flee to Tatooine and live as a hermit on the edge of the desert, but please, Obi-Wan, you can leave now. While you still have the chance.”

 

Itachi places his hand on Anakin’s shoulder again and pulls him gently back from Obi-Wan, “Anakin.”

 

Anakin stares at Obi-Wan, waits for a response, some sort of acknowledgment, but there is none. Because in this world he and Anakin are not brothers, he is not Anakin’s master, and more, he is a general. Though in some other world he may have followed Anakin to the ends of the earth, this is not it.

 

Anakin bows, and, lifting his head towards Obi-Wan, offers a final cryptic farewell, “Sometimes, Obi-Wan, clones don’t dream of electric sheep.”

 

* * *

 

A few months later, Obi-Wan’s men turn on him, as if he was nothing more than an enemy droid to be stricken down with a blaster.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the 400th review of "Finishing the Hat" on fanfiction by KYnR who asked for a fic with Tobirama as a senator in the republic for Konoha dealing with the republic. That translated into this.

There is no post of senator for Konohagakure or the planet Earth from which the shinobi hail. They are not inducted into the republic in the thirteen years the galaxy has known of their existence. More, no jedi nor any other member of the republic has ever visited their planet or even knows of its direction save that it is somewhere beyond the outer rim. They are every bit the shadows they claim to be, seeping in from the edges of the known galaxy, until you turn and there they are on Tatooine as if they had been there all along.

 

Similarly, with a single decision from a divided senate, from the chancellor who seems to gain more and more control over, they are gone as if they were merely smoke cleared with a breath of wind.

 

All gone, of course, except for Tobirama Senju who seems content to stay until the bitter end.

 

Qui-Gon sighs, wiping a hand over his face, for once that fluorescent diner charm of Dex’s doing nothing to either invoke nostalgia or soothe his nerves. The booth seems empty, Obi-Wan is gone to Utapau on a desperate mission to find and kill Grievous after his escape from the battle over Coruscant. Anakin Skywalker, his shinobi partner Itachi Uchiha, and all the other hired Konoha ninja have been dismissed and returned to Konoha on behest of the senate unwilling to pay for their services, Obito Uchiha and Lee Eru both missing in action for years now, his own Master Dooku a sith apprentice and dead by Anakin’s hand, and only Tobirama Senju remaining the seat across from him with an overpriced glass of imported Corellian whiskey.

 

It is almost shameful how Qui-Gon wishes he could partake in that drink, that merely releasing his tension, his fear, his anger, and his dread into the force these days is simply not enough.

 

Tobirama, with a rather knowing edge to his smile, lifts a second, empty glass towards him in offering.

 

“No thank you, my friend,” Qui-Gon states, leaving Tobirama to tilt his head back and throw back the drink. As always, it is a strangely fascinating thing to watch.

 

Each shinobi he meets is a little different from the next, and Qui-Gon, per his own brand of unorthodoxy when it comes to the jedi code, has met far more of them than the typical jedi.

 

Lee and Obito, master and apprentice, he has come to realize in the years since, were stranger and far odder than he had realized. Even by their own people’s standards they are something extraordinary, powerful almost beyond imagination, and so often misunderstood. They are the sword and shield but also something softer that years for the bright innate wonder of the universe. People with a great capacity good but with perhaps a greater capacity for evil, even if they never choose to partake in it.

 

Tobirama Senju, though, is his own creature as well. At a glance he resembles a jedi, one haunted by war perhaps, but he wears their pragmatism and stoicism. Obi-Wan, as he grew into knighthood and then mastery, often reminds him of Tobirama Senju. Aggressively negotiate, it is a term he thinks Tobirama has understood long before Obi-Wan coined it.

 

The man is not quite reserved but there is an air of sobriety about him that is almost intimidating. Yet, there are times such as this, where you can see how the world has worn down the soul of this man.

 

It is in the small things, the shadows beneath his eyes, and the liquor he will occasionally pour down his throat.

 

“So, the senate sessions have been that fruitful,” Qui-Gon concludes slowly, with a kind if pained smile of his own.

 

Tobirama merely spares him a look as if the answer is self-evident, and the sad thing is, it truly is. Qui-Gon does not think there has been a truly productive senate session, one informed by anything other than fear or greed, in over thirteen years.

 

The invasion of Naboo by the trade federation, there were no separatists then, it would be ten years before the separatists would unveil themselves on Geonosis, and yet all the same Qui-Gon would pinpoint the first sign of their troubles being that invasion of Naboo.

 

So much had happened then.

 

The shinobi revealed themselves, the sith apprentice was found and then dead with his master still unknown, and then Anakin Skywalker…

 

“I often wonder why they even bother having me attend,” Tobirama remarks, interrupting Qui-Gon’s reminiscing, “I am an ambassador, not a senator.”

 

Qui-Gon does not know either, Tobirama is as he says not a senator and holds no vote in the senate, and yet he is offered a seat in Naboo’s box all the same in honor of the friendship between Naboo and Konohagakure. There he sits, a senator but not, impotent next to the proud senator Padmé Amidala who like all the rest of them watches the republic crumble from within.

 

He unnerves many but, Qui-Gon believes that there are some who also find odd comfort in a shinobi’s presence. Tobirama has become an icon of sorts, the kinder if odder face of Konoha, a hint of the divine wind of the force that had once saved Naboo from annihilation.

 

A good luck charm, almost, but not one that has brought the force’s benevolence to them.

 

Tobirama then stares across at Qui-Gon, pondering. Tobirama has been doing this often lately. Perhaps because even after all these years, after all that the second hokage seems to remain ageless and suspended in the force, Qui-Gon is the closest thing he has to a friend among the jedi. Then again, Qui-Gon is the closest jedi to pretty much any shinobi who wanders into the galaxy, from Tobirama Senju, Lee Eru, to Itachi Uchiha. Qui-Gon Jinn is still, after all these years, being used as a template jedi for these people, and they still don’t quite understand the irony of that.

 

Finally, Tobirama says quite seriously, “Jinn, our forces would have been pulled even if the funding had not been.”

 

Qui-Gon almost wants to smile, shinobi always insist on very serious conversations in Dex’s. Lee had often send her most troubling statements inside of these very booths. Once, years ago, she had stated here that Senator Palpatine was the sith master. Qui-Gon had not believed her then, not when the man was elected chancellor either, now though…

 

Now the man’s presence presses upon the jedi temple like a shadow they cannot shake off. Now his spies are presumed to be everywhere inside their own walls. And he could merely be a politician, perhaps even a despot, but a feeling of dread blooms in the living force and Qui-Gon often wonders if Lee Eru is doomed to be the prophet no one recognizes until it is far too late.

 

But he doesn’t know, can’t, perhaps know. So, he must sit here in fear and anxiety, waiting to be sent again to the front, or else waiting here for the armada to appear once again on Coruscant’s horizon.

 

Waiting, it seems all Qui-Gon does these days is wait.

 

“Why is that?” Qui-Gon asks instead, and Tobirama Senju does not smile, instead his strange red eyes seem to burn.

 

“You have always been a friend to our people, Qui-Gon, you and your apprentice,” Tobirama states, plainly, using Qui-Gon’s first name as he and his people so rarely do, “Lee once offered you sanctuary in _Konoha_ , I believe it is time to take that offer.”

 

Qui-Gon pauses and remembers that no one has ever been to Konoha, no one except Anakin Skywalker who didn’t return for ten years. No jedi, no sith, no member of the republic or galaxy has ever stepped foot on the planet Earth let alone inside the Village Hidden in the Leaves.

 

Years earlier it had been so much easier, simpler, to shrug off that offer. There had been no war then, no heavy presence of the sith, Master Dooku was still a jedi then… It had seemed a joke, almost, from Lee Eru’s lips. A sign of friendship, fondness, but nothing he had ever expected to take seriously and another sign that she simply did not understand the jedi order.

 

Didn’t understand that even Qui-Gon, black sheep that he was, forever denied a seat on the council and often branded a borderline heretic, wouldn’t simply leave the order. Certainly not flee it for the safety of a shinobi village of all places.

 

Yet now his mouth is dry, and he finds that though it hangs open no words can exit his throat. That dread, that horror, of the living force is blooming within him once again and the scent of its petals is that of charred flesh from saber burns and the iron of blood.

 

Tobirama stands, takes Qui-Gon’s hands in his with a small, weary, and almost pitying smile as he says simply, “Think about it, quickly, because I will be leaving soon as well. And after me… After me there will be no one.”

 

* * *

 

Master Yoda is sent to Kashyyyk, jedi masters are, in fact, sent almost everywhere in the galaxy as the separatist cause has spread like a cancer through the republic.

 

However, Qui-Gon is not the commander his former padawan now is. Qui-Gon has very rarely been entrusted with clone troops in this war, and instead has acted as the shinobi have in the latter half. He is too old for war, too unorthodox, and is instead kept inside the jedi temple and then quickly dispatched here and there to throw at a problem that can only be solved by Qui-Gon, the living force, and a few strays.

 

As a result, Qui-Gon has both seen little of the war and far too much of it. He is suspended between the bloody moons, between his former padawan covered in burns of blasters and the grease of slain droids, and the unnerving quiet of the jedi temple empty of all but a few masters and the wide-eyed initiates who may very well find themselves drafted into this conflict.

 

Child soldiers, he thinks, just like the shinobi. If this war persists they will become a hidden village in their own right, and those children shinobi that Qui-Gon sees passing through the republic bearing the ranking of knights will no longer be such oddities. And then the children will grow and become masters themselves, and when looking upon their next generation, like the shinobi will think nothing of the horror of inflecting war upon initiates.

 

Pushing them into the future that had been so haunting and terrible that Qui-Gon had insisted that Anakin going down that path, choosing the shinobi over the jedi, would inevitably turn him to the dark side.

 

War, Tobirama had once told him in blunt and brutal despair over drinks one night, was the price of chakra.

 

Qui-Gon often spends his time on Coruscant in the archives. He is not the only one who searches for solace, for answers, in the lessons of the jedi before them. However, he is the only one on Coruscant often enough to make a true habit of it.

 

Republics, empires, they have come and gone. The jedi have waxed and then waned, the sith the same, but both have survived throughout all those empires and republics. For thousands of years there have been both jedi and sith…

 

He reads prophecies, rereads the one he always thought was meant for Anakin. Anakin… He has not seen much of him, Obi-Wan has seen more of him since the war, but he and Anakin once spoke of the prophecy.

 

It was so very strange, Anakin, older then and a shinobi had stared at him as if he had known exactly what Qui-Gon meant without his having to say a word about it. For all that Anakin has not trained in the ways of the jedi or the force, he had such an instinctive grasp upon it, and nowhere is that more apparent than in his ability to tell the future.

 

Still, Anakin had grimaced for a moment as if in pain, then, putting his hands into his pockets in the kind of show of casualness that Obito would often put on, said quietly, “I… I really don’t know if it was ever me, Qui-Gon.”

 

“Perhaps,” Anakin said, before Qui-Gon could interject, “If you look at it from the right angle, but I think I would have had… The potential, for it, but I also had the potential to become something truly terrible.”

 

Anakin had left shortly after that, attempted to distract Qui-Gon by wishing him and the order well, and soon after the battle in Coruscant’s orbit took place and then immediately after the dismissal of the shinobi forces by the senate.

 

Was it Anakin Skywalker? He wonders that even now, it haunts him that if Anakin had been a jedi perhaps none of this would have come to pass. Anakin seems uncertain of that, no, certain that his presence could have only made it worse. Was it someone else then, someone Qui-Gon had never met, or worse had met but then disregarded?

 

Was it Lee Eru?

 

Lee had seemed… So important, so odd and bright in the force, and Qui-Gon had had this certain feeling that she must not leave the galaxy. Yet she had, and in time it seemed as if the force had almost forgotten about her and her apprentice, as if they were a small and unusual accident that now having occurred need never be spoken of again.

 

Sometimes it seemed as if, in meeting and seeing Lee Eru, Qui-Gon had caught a glimpse of some inner working of reality that was supposed to have remained beyond his knowledge.

 

Still, Qui-Gon sits, and he thinks, and he ponders over what he is supposed to do now. The war has become not simply a dread shadow but an unstoppable machine that he cannot even dream of dismantling. The sith presence is tangible and yet still seemingly unknown, and if not unknown than untouchable by Qui-Gon. The force grows more muddled and unresponsive with every passing moment. The council descends into bickering, turn into soldiers and generals of the republic, and drives more and more of their own into the hands of the dark side while accomplishing nothing. Even if that frustration, that notion itself, was what drove his own master to the sith and makes Qui-Gon wonder in horror if he himself has always been skirting the edges of the dark side unwittingly.

 

The living force, sometimes whispering in his ear, insists that Qui-Gon is dead already.

 

Dead on Naboo, dead in that electrical room in Lee Eru’s place, dead and gone with a grieving Obi-Wan Kenobi left in his stead to train Anakin Skywalker as a padawan. Watching from the force, unseen and unmarked, as the republic dismantles itself and all Qui-Gon’s hopes run dry.

 

Qui-Gon often reminds himself that he survived, survived for thirteen years past that day, and yet that still doesn’t stop the unwavering and horrifying certainty that steals over him that he should be dead already.

 

That his being alive now is nothing short of a miracle, nothing that could have been accomplished save the intervention of the shinobi.

 

Still, for all the archives discuss sith of the past, for all they discuss the trials and tribulations of the jedi, the unresolved prophecies that hang in the air, Qui-Gon has not yet found a solution among their stores.

 

He is not sure, that at this point, he expects one.

 

It is here, in the archives, that Tobirama finds him.

 

The man walks through the place with a wistful look in his eye, as out of place among the stacks as he has always been, and he says quietly, “I shall miss this place, when I return to _Konoha_.”

 

He fingers the data pads, taking one as he sits at Qui-Gon’s table, “So much history, so much knowledge and culture, will be lost to us when I leave.”

 

“You truly believe your people will never return then,” Qui-Gon states, because Tobirama had implied it but not yet outright said it.

 

Finally, after some consideration, Tobirama says, “It will be years before we can come back, decades perhaps, and then… Things change, there may not be jedi archives anymore.”

 

Qui-Gon forces himself to smile, “We have survived more than a few wars and rebellions, Tobirama.”

 

However, Tobirama just gives him this look, as if he already knows the republic is doomed and that this is why the shinobi are now gone. That when and if they return to this place Tobirama will expect to return to rubble.

 

Qui-Gon doesn’t ask why he is so certain, so pessimistic, he does not dare. If the force will not present this future to him, the he does not want it from Tobirama’s lips. Instead he asks, “Do you know when you leave?”  


“Within the week,” Tobirama says, “I came in part, aside from gathering last minute files, anything I can, to remind you to decide quickly.”

 

“Just me?” Qui-Gon asks, not quite surprised, and not quite flattered, yet oddly feeling a hint of both.

 

“Kenobi as well, if he can be reached,” Tobirama says with the slightest of shrugs and a sigh of exhaustion, “I… would offer to take the children but I know that even you would refuse.”

 

“The children?” Qui-Gon asks, eyebrows raising, and wondering just what kind of a future Tobirama Senju is imagining for the jedi.

 

Tobirama Senju however does not back down as he did not back down in Dex’s, if anything he seems more anxious than before, “Jinn, you are one of the few jedi masters left in this place, left on this planet. Your people are spread thin across the outer rim, each light-years apart from one another. If they sack Coruscant, then you have left your weakest and youngest members practically undefended.”

 

Qui-Gon once would have denied the possibility, but the sight of Grievous ships over Coruscant hangs heavy in his thoughts and the force, that if Obi-Wan’s troops had not driven them back that day they very well could have been looking at the sacking of Coruscant.

 

They would not have taken the temple, not with the clones defending and what masters were there barricading the gates, but all the same…

 

However, if they went to Konoha, then Qui-Gon was all but guaranteeing that each and every one of them would become a shinobi in the manner that Anakin Skywalker had. They would walk the path of darkness, war, and death whether they willed it or not. Even if they returned, in one decade or two, they would no longer be jedi.

 

And he couldn’t…

 

Tobirama had known that Qui-Gon could not ask that.

 

All the man could say with a sigh is simply, “I will see you, one last time, before I leave. You have until then to decide.” 

 

* * *

 

In the end, it comes unnaturally quickly, or perhaps there is nothing quick about it. It has, after all, taken more than thirteen years to come to a head.

 

There is a troop of clones passing through Coruscant, a sight that would have been an oddity years ago, but now is a rather familiar one. They march as one, eerily in time with one another, their minds that of beings who are not quite yet men though have the earnest potential to be. Covered in white armor and helmets they look in and of themselves like peculiarly humanoid droids, which, Qui-Gon supposes is the intention.

 

To make the people of the republic forget that they are sending sentient men to fight and die in this civil war.

 

Qui-Gon watches from a balcony in the jedi temple, not quite a military parade, but instead a more pragmatic march to station and defend Coruscant’s main ports. The jedi grow thin, they can no longer protect all air strips, and in their place the planet swarms with clones.

 

Tobirama, uninvited into the temple but here all the same, is meeting with Qui-Gon Jinn one last time before he departs. He is dressed in his combat gear, just as Lee Eru and her apprentice were all those years ago, and slung over his back is a pack that is entirely too small given the fact that it is likely carrying an entire city inside.

 

“I can’t say I don’t understand,” Tobirama says, not even bothering to look at the clones but instead straight at Qui-Gon. He is, of course, speaking to the fact that in the week since Tobirama has left him to his own thoughts Qui-Gon has yet to take him up on his offer.

 

Tobirama smiles, ever so slightly, as he notes, “I’d likely do the same thing for Konoha, did, in fact.”

 

“Oh?” Qui-Gon asks, glancing at the man as he leans over the railing and partakes in memories.

 

“There was a man, long ago, who was close friends with my older brother, despite all the circumstances against them,” Tobirama said, and the sunset reflected in his eyes as he stared out at the glittering city, “His name was Madara Uchiha and he was… much like your sith. I believe he was a good man, once, but hatred and anger poisoned him against the world. He betrayed his people, his own family, and my brother his only true friend. He unleashed a demon on our village with the intent of burning every one of us alive. My brother died putting that man into his grave, and my sister-in-law turned herself into a human sacrifice over the consequences of his actions.”

 

He paused, frowned, allowed the words to linger in the air before saying quietly, “When it happened I didn’t run, didn’t even think to, and in the aftermath, I became hokage in my brother’s place as I had never intended to.”

 

“Tobirama,” Qui-Gon says slowly, tasting the words and the doubt he can no longer simply release into the force, “If I abandon the order, if I leave…”

 

“You will live,” Tobirama finishes for him, that small and simple statement meaning far more than it ever should, “That is what I can guarantee, perhaps the only thing I can guarantee.”

 

And yet, Qui-Gon thinks, it is one thing to leave the order out of disagreement. He has in truth often been tempted to leave the order out of disagreement in philosophy and the frustration over what happened with Anakin. However, to leave out of cowardice, fear, and self-preservation?  


He opens his mouth to state this, to damn himself to whatever awaits the order and the republic, but that is the moment of the beginning of the end.

 

The troopers all stop as one. They stand perfectly still if only for a moment, their minds utterly empty inside the force. Then, again as one, they turn away from their path through the square to the steps of the jedi temple. They take their blasters from the holsters at their hips, undo the safety, and before even stepping through the gates begin to fire on the civilians as well as into the temple itself where Qui-Gon can already hear the children screaming.

 

Because, he thinks in horror, it is only children and himself left inside of the temple.

 

He rushes down flights of stairs from a floor that is too high, Tobirama keeping pace with him as they go down and down, and in the living force there is a great cry of terror and pain as jedi masters are slaughtered by their own men while the children are slaughtered below. For every second Qui-Gon fails to reach them he can hear another pass from this world into the next.

 

And he does not know if it is the force, his imagination, or if he truly can smell the blood and burning skin from so many floors up as he sprints down the stairwell.

 

He glances at Tobirama, it is a quick look, and yet he feels a realization sinking into his stomach as he stares at the man’s face. This is… This is the moment he will leave, he will not, cannot save the jedi order and he will leave now and never return.

 

Qui-Gon does not wish to die, but then he is dead already, and more he is a jedi who perhaps should crumble with his own people. Survive if he can, somehow get out and survive this with whatever good will is left in the force, but…

 

“Tobirama,” he breathes, Tobirama glances at him, and his eyes are dark and unreadable and every inch a shinobi’s eyes versus a jedi’s.

 

Qui-Gon feels his heart pounding in his chest, his lightsaber burning as it is turned on, and he closes his eyes on whatever uncertain future he is condemning them to. And yet, he says, “Tobirama, take the children.”

 

It is as if the force shudders. Suddenly, all those bright lights of the future, all the jedi those children could have been if they survived this, if they became fugitives of whoever now controls the clones are snuffed out.

 

And, just as with Anakin Skywalker, nothing knowable or familiar stands in their place.

 

But Tobirama is already gone, flying down the staircase past Qui-Gon, and Qui-Gon knows by the time he reaches the lower levels the man and many of the children will already be gone. Hopefully, all of them, realistically whoever the man can get to first.

 

Which will lead Qui-Gon to somehow get the rest out of the temple and out of Coruscant entirely before the sith make an appearance, whoever and wherever they linger.

 

And Qui-Gon, he can only activate his saber and release his anger, his fear, his grief, and his dread into the force. As always, even before his feet hit the steps of that lower floor, he wonders which chosen one he had missed.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for someone who asked for a world in which Anakin goes back to Konoha and does not become a Jedi. This eventually produced two chapters on this theme.
> 
> Thanks for reading comments, kudos, and bookmarks are greatly appreciated.


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